SES Recap and Takeaways

Search marketing is growing up. This year’s Search Engine Strategies San Jose presenters as well as attendees are acquiring a sense of ownership and integration with the rest of the business development team.

Defining the Value of Search

Today’s successful search marketers don’t just go away and provide magical results. They participate in planning of success for the company they serve. They create integrated marketing plans and they work with other marketing professionals to present a clearer picture of what the touch points are for their customers on and offline.

The Search & Measurement Track was chock full of theory as well as application. The “Meaningful SEO Metrics: Going Beyond the Numbers” panel shared that search has had a bit of mystery around it and those who understand and successfully execute no longer feel the need to own their clicks from PPC and natural search, they’ve established their place as a contender for the marketing dollar and this maturity allows them to take a larger role at the planning table and nurture an environment that understands the customer attribution model.

One of the most difficult and most powerful things we created for ourselves as search marketers is our reliance on analytics, said one of the panelists. Search marketing is held to a level of accountability that doesn’t exist for our radio, TV and print counterparts. Attribution of the click, with exceptional implementation of analytics tools is the cornerstone of search and will ultimately be why more and more of the marketing budget will go towards online efforts.

There have never been more tools, more knowledge or more need for defining the value of search with the execution of exceptional analysis, nor has it ever been more complex. As the value of search continues to evolve, analytics will add at least as much value of other search strategies.

Today’s top-tier search marketers have not only answered all the questions from the business community about how they add value, today’s search marketers are standing in front of the business community and have asserted a leadership position in impacting the bottom line through search marketing and all that entails.

Defining the Future of Search

SES Advisory Board Member Anne Kennedy said a great deal of time and energy went into “The Future of Search” Track. Predictive modeling and semantic technology will change SEO. Industry heavy hitters predictions were supported by a good amount of data as well as past experience. Semantic and predictive modeling will challenge the search marketing industry to define value and ranking as a business metric will fade as personalized results become more and more prevalent.

Defining the Customers Role in Branding

Social Media, though still in it’s infancy, is also growing up. Companies like Dell, Comcast and WalMart are leveraging the power of the consumer conversation to drive branding.

Charlene Li, co-author of Groundswell, executed a highly informative and actionable keynote. Its’ relevancy and clarity were of the highest caliber and search marketer and business community alike gleaned understanding from the presentation.

Defining the Players

Google is now seen as a bit of a 600-pound gorilla and Microsoft is shifting its’ role from behemoth to the scrappy company learning to listen to its’ customers needs rather than drive their own agenda, which some considered to be the reason for their lack of market share. The launch of Bing in June and their recent collaboration with Yahoo is helping them take a bigger piece of search (though still a small part of the search picture).

Defining Success for the Industry

One thing hasn’t changed, that’s the excitement and intensity of search marketing practitioners. Even if you’ve no interest in search marketing, you’d be hard pressed not to be swept up in the speed of change and the conviction of ideas and philosophies of today’s search marketers.

Defining Success for Businesses

Site reviews have always been a mainstay of the search marketing conference, it’s a great way to take search theories and put them into practice. Bryan Eisenberg and Ethan Giffin paneled a live clinic. Outdoorplay.com, a Hood River-founded company, received focus research through UserTesting.com to better understand how and why to implement the recommended expert recommendations. The user testing made the session that much more relevant since the panelists weren’t just espousing their views (which are well-founded) but showing that users back up their suppositions about the sites strengths and deficiencies.

Success is different for every business, but the commonality is entrenched in business process; create objectives, strategies and tactics and analyze and improve. The biggest challenge for businesses large and small is finding the right search partner and maintaining a commitment to search.

Defining Search Marketing Role

The reality is that natural search continues to be the lifetime value marketing proposition that does an exceptional job of providing short term and long term business goals. The onus is no longer just on the search professionals. Companies who are investing in search are reaping the benefits, but the cost is integration into their team, understanding the goals of the CMO, commitment to the search process and most importantly, commitment to analysis of the metrics.

At my first SES San Jose show in 2001 it was our effort to try to fit into the marketing mix and find our place, we were learning how to have impact by understanding the algorithm, now we’re adding impact by understanding the business and the customer.

At the end of the day, the biggest changes were that early adopters of search have the lead and displacing them is nearly impossible. The divide between search strategies for small and big business are enormous, yet the ability to impact your business and brand online has never been better. The quality of technical-centric strategies and consumer-centric strategies will be the driver to the next level of search. What this means for the business community is that search is becoming less of a mystery or dark art and more of a necessary, quantifiable strategy to business goals.

Favorite SES Show Stats

80% of Fortune 500 plans on marketing spend for PPC

55% of Fortune 500 plans on marketing spend for natural search

75% Americans are participating in social media

A relatively small number of business are creating actionable analysis from their analytics data

Successful websites get about as much traffic, leads and sales from social media as they do from search engines

Favorite SES Case Study

One of the best implementations of on and offline integration was from WalMart, in real-time they’re posting their customers product review at the product level in the store. That’s real power for the consumer. At one of the social media tracks a presenter said he had a conversation with a Fortune 500 CEO that said, we’re just not ready to have our customers talking about us yet. They are talking about you, your choice isn’t if you’re ready as a business community, the question is are you going to participate in that conversation?

Thanks again to Marty Weintraub of AimClear for the opportunity to write for the show, it was a great experience, thanks as well to my Derek Edmond and Merry Morud, fellow live bloggers. (check out our coverage at AimClearblog)

This week’s InnoTech Conference (The Business & Technology Innovation Conference and Expo) at the Oregon Convention Center April 22-23 boasts a wide range of Technical and Web Topics including IT issues, Local Search, Blogging, Enterprise Search and Mobile Search: (see Sessions At a Glance).

MEDIA forte marketing, will be paneling a Hot Seat Site Reviews session with Hallie Janssen, Anvil Media, Kent Schnepp, EngineWorks and Scott Hendison, Search Commander. These sessions are a great way to take SEO/SEM best practices and apply them to live sites.

Another “Don’t Miss” is David Mihm’s “Local Search Marketing Strategies“. David, GetListed.org, shares strategies for maximizing exposure in local Google and Yahoo listings.

The SoMe (social media) Awards is a newcomer to the line up and and honors the area’s top social marketing campaigns. Also on the Social Media front, Rahaf Harfoush, New Media Strategist, Member of Obama’s Social Media Team, & Associate Director of the Global Cooperation Initiative at the World Economic Forum will present at the InnoTech Keynote Lunch on Thursday, April 23, 2009 (register here). Unique opportunity to hear, first hand, from a member of the social media campaign that redefined politics.

If you’re at the Expo, come visit our SEMpdx Booth and learn more about becoming a member of one of the best search marketing organizations in the country.

In it’s 6th year, InnoTech agenda and speakers keep getting better. Don’t miss it!

After months of hard work from our SEMpdx team, SearchFest 09 launched their 3rd Annual event. It was, in a word, awesome.

Though there is so much to discuss since the show was such a hit, here are

Eight Things I Didn’t Expect from SearchFest 09

SEMpdx Brought In the Biggest Names in The Business

Todd Mintz, Kent Lewis and David Mihm were pivotal in bringing in the top guns in all the search areas discussed, Social Marketing, Technical SEO, PR, Online Reputation Management, WordPress and Blogging, etc. We had big names as well as the big three (Google, Yahoo, MSN).

Danny Sullivan Keynoted

Danny Sullivan, the Godfather of search, keynoted about the perception of search and helped create some potential new language for the industry to create clarity about the depth of search. Terms recommended included Technical SEO, speaking to the technical and site architecture side of search and Content SEO, speaking to the content development side of search. I’ve heard Danny speak several times and I thought it was great that he actually asked our membership what they’d like to learn from his keynote and he addressed those questions and issues. Didn’t surprise me that he’s such a classy, thoughtful guy, but that, even as busy as he is, he took the time to address SEMpdx membership questions.

We Sold Out

Okay, we knew it was going to be a big show, but we were being fairly ambitious, especially in this economic climate, way to go Hallie Janssen and Kent Schnepp.

One of Our Panelists Was Heckled

Neil Patel is considered to be one of the first social marketers, he is a confident, enthusiastic, very talented business man. He’s also very young and cocky (title of his blog “Quick Sprout-I’m Kind of a Big Deal”) and his ideas and vision can be very cutting edge, to say the least. The heckling was fairly surprising considering the caliber of professionals at the event, but it brought up an important point. Who are these people anyway? It’s one thing to heckle if they’re just post adolescent hackers who know too much because they spend too much time in front of a computer, but Neil Patel has helped AOL, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard and Viacom make more money from the web. By the age of 21 not only was Neil named a top 100 blogger by Technorati, but he was also one of the top influencers on the web according to the Wall Street Journal. Neil is a respected author and speaker and he is, indeed, kind of a big deal.

Building and Growing your SEM Business Was a HUGE Hit

We had this track at SMX West last year and it was great and well-received, but lightly attended because it was opposite some heavy hitters. Also, SEM’s are often at shows to get knowledge about learn about implementation, so we were excited to see so many attendees prepared to learn how to run a business. Anne Kennedy, Adam Audette and Rand Fishkin comprised our panel and they, also, were against some heavy hitters (Marshall Simmonds and Derrick Wheeler) but they packed the house. Their advice about running and growing a business was great, but they took it a step further and discussed their own growth and goals so candidly and so whole-heartedly that I actual got a little vaklempt listening to them discuss their struggles (“Sometimes we had to choose who on the team got paid that month”) and their revelations (“Hire people you know and trust”) and their enormous gratitude for their mentors and family (Adam learned a great deal about the search business from his father and one of the first search marketers, John Audette). Best piece of advice expressed from every panelist “Be Skilled”.

(Check out the live blogging of the session here.)

SEMpdx Is Considered One of the Best Search Marketing Organizations in the Country

Even though he’s from Canada and works in Gig Harbor, WA, Todd Friesen of Position Tech (one of our panelists and veteran SEM) said SEMpdx is one of, if not, the best regional search marketing organizations in the country (we were drinking at the reception at Hotel deLuxe, but confirmed his opinion later;)

SEMpdx and the Search Industry Got Some Coverage for SearchFest

Marketplace and NPR’s Sadie Babits had shown early interest in the story, but it was postponed and we hope to speak with her soon;) But, KPTV covered the event (thanks to our PR power from Amy Rosenberg) and, more importantly, the impact of search on the local economy. Portland Monthly Magazine ran a piece (from none other than one of our writers, Keri Brenner) about search marketing and SearchFest. Not to mention the ton of coverage from the people we got on Twitter at #sf09

No One Wanted to Take Credit

As marketers, we love to take the limelight. We love to be on stage, we adore the sound of our own voices. But when it came to taking credit, it was hard to get a “You’re welcome”. I thanked Scott Hendison for uploading powerpoints at the last minute, he said, “Not a problem”. I thanked Mike Rosenberg for getting all our wonderful sponsors, he said, “Thank the sponsors”. I thanked Pixelsilk and our other sponsors and they said, “Thank the board”. I thanked our SEMpdx President Ben Lloyd for his great keynote introduction and guidance through the process, he said “Thank Hallie and Kent”. I thanked Hallie and Kent and they said, “Thank the awesome panelists”. I thanked the panelists, they said, “Thank the great attendees”. So thank you, to everyone who made this SearchFest our best yet.

If you’re learning about how search marketing can help grow your businees, don’t miss Aaron Wall’s Webinar “SEO Strategies for the 21st Century” tomorrow, October 21, 2008 12PM Pacific Time.

Aaron’s book “SEO Book” has been used as course text for MBA classes and Aaron has spoken at industry conferences and schools about search engine optimization and internet marketing.

The webinar is free, register now. and is co-sponsored by Corvent and SEMpdx.

It’s the best hour you’ll spend learning about Search Marketing, topics include:

* New tools you can use for SEO and competitive research
* How “search suggest” will shape the future of SEO
* Effective link building techniques in a market where link building is getting harder by the day

I’ll be moderating the event and they’re will be a Q & A session after Aaron’s presentation, Hope you’ll join us,

Last week I served on two hot seat panels, one at SEMPDX and one at Software Association of Oregon Tech Pub in Corvallis. Site reviews can be hard in a group setting because often times the search marketing education level varies dramatically for participants so making the content relevant can be difficult. Both of these panels went really well and, upon assessment, I found some universal truths that may be helpful to search marketers as well as the business person hoping to glean helpful information from site reviews:

#1 Search marketing is a hot topic! Not that this is an enormous surprise, but with all the unhappy economic forecasts, business owners are looking to search to help them get an edge.

#2 Web site campaigns (SEO, SEM, other advertising campaigns) are ultimately managed by individuals with little knowledge or understanding of search. This makes it all the more important that as search professionals we do what we can to educate and help business owners make informed decisions about their search investment.

#3 40% of search queries have local intent-WOW! Don’t forget local efforts. Ranking in local search algorithms can be less expensive than ranking in the overall algorithms in many cases. If your business is driven by local, learn about these tactics. Check out David’s notes from the SEMPDX Hot Seat, David has created some amazing research around the topic and is a highly-respected expert in the area. Download David’s PowerPoint here.

#4 There’s a shortage of women in the search profession;) As a speaker on the search circuit and as the Marketing/Membership Chair of the SEMPDX Board of Directors, I am surprised at the percentage of women in search marketing, especially on the technical side. About 18% of speakers at the shows are women, if you’re a web developer or web marketer and you’re a woman, get some education, experience and get involved on the search side.

#5 Websites need fresh content. You can’t just build it and they will come. Keep your content fresh through site updates, blog content, site reviews and images. Google loves it, your visitors love it.

#6 Everyone learns at Hot Seat Site Reviews. My background is as a reporter and my specialty was initially content development (which morphed into website usability, analytics and search). Though I engage very talented technical folks to help me do my job, I’m not an enormously technical person, my strength is on the marketing side. At one of the hot seats, I learned how important load time (for a hood river real estate website) is to search, not something that I was taking into consideration as a piece of my search strategies. Even if you’re a seasoned search professional, become a member of SEMPDX and learn how to be even better at your job.

#7 Sites with partial or limited SEO can still be profitable and fully optimized sites can miss business goals. In a perfect world, everyone would have a perfectly optimized site, but don’t lose site that the goal is business growth and that is, ultimately, the goal.

#8 It’s still important to talk about the basics. At the SAO Hot Seat, I asked how many people knew what a title tag was, in a room of about 50 only a handful did. Link building and SMM are nearly irrelevant exercises unless keyword research and some foundational optimization efforts are made.

#9 Business owners are frustrated with search. I heard from several participants who were frustrated about how to start with a search marketer and, just as importantly, weren’t sure what to expect from engaging with a search marketer. This is why SEMPDX is so important, the board of directors and advisory board of this group are happy to help educate so business owners can avoid the pitfalls of bad search marketers (sadly there are still many out there, but they’re getting easier to spot).

#10 Business owners are not sure how to choose a search marketer. I’ll be doing a post next week about this topic, but here’s a good approach-the proof is in the pudding;) Any good search marketer should have case studies and references that show they have provided search marketing success for other clients. If they don’t, go find one who does.

#11 Search marketers love their job. I have been involved with web marketing since 1996. It is such an exciting field and it changes so rapidly that we are required to attend search conferences regularly to stay on top of trends and changes in the algorithm. Engaging in a search campaign is often invigorating for business owners, it ignites their passion for search as well as for the overall growth of the business. It can really be a lot of fun.

#12 There is no substitute for a professional. Search marketing is a discipline that requires a lot of time and education to learn. As a business owner, if you have a great deal of time to invest, you should. However, if you’re busy with the day to day running of your business, hire a professional to help you grow your business with search marketing.

PS Shout out to all the great panelists at both events, Scott Hendison, David Mihm, Todd Mintz, Scott Fish and Andre Jensen.

Big thank you to Chris Elwell, Claire Shoen, Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman for allowing me to present at SMX West.

It was a great experience and I was happy to meet Damien and Fionn. Hope to see everybody at SMX Advanced in Seattle.